Amul – The Success Story

It all started in the mid 1940s when poor farmers who worked hard, day in and day out were exploited by the local traders and given only small incentives. Angered by unfair and manipulative practices , the farmers under the leadership of Tribhuvandas Patel approached Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel to resolve their grievances.
Empathising with the farmers, Sardar Vallabhai Patel advised them to be self-sustaining entrepreneurs and work for themselves. The farmers took this advice seriously and formed their own cooperative societies. The story thus began.. What started with only a few farmers producing 247 litres of milk grew into a fully fledged organisation with more than 3.6 million milk producers producing around 14.85 million litres per day ( 2015).
The cooperative was further developed and managed by Dr.Verghese Kurien.

There are certain interesting aspects related to the success of Anand Milk Union Limited (aka Amul)

Innovation

In the 1960’s, Amul became the first brand in the world to make skimmed milk powder from buffalo milk. Also with its three-tiered cooperative structure, Amul changed from traditional operations to a more cost-efficient and effective structure.
The brand has constantly been launching new products, creative marketing campaigns (oh those amazing puns!) or challenging traditional social trends to come up with better ones. It also won the “CNN-IBN Innovating for Better Tomorrow Award” and “World Dairy Innovation Award” in the year 2014.

Efficient Supply Chain

Amul follows a three-tier cooperative structure which consists of a dairy cooperative society at the village level that is affiliated with milk unions at the district level which in turn is federated to a milk federation at the state level. Milk is collected at the village dairy society, procured and processed at the district milk union and marketed at the state milk federation. The effectiveness of this model lies in the fact that Amul was the first company to follow this model, and since then it was replicated all over the country under Operation Flood in the 1970’s. The model ensures that there’s efficiency and swiftness in operation. The Amul model has helped India become one of the largest milk producer in the world.

The Amul Mascot

The Amul girl is the advertising mascot used by the company to promote the brand. The brand has been using the cartoon figure in its longest running ad campaign . The content is liked by the people and results in better customer engagement. This increases the brand recall value for Amul. Hence, the Amul girl advertising campaign is often described as one of the best Indian advertising concepts.

Strong Brand

They promote everything under one common brand name – Amul. The prime focus is on promoting the parent brand rather than individual products which helps them gain more brand visibility

There is a lot to learn from the Amul story. It tells us the importance of collective effort and systematic organisation. One move led to another and then another and today Amul , which spurred the Indian White revolution is one of the biggest brands not only in India but also in the world.